[The Astonishing History of Troy Town by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch]@TWC D-Link book
The Astonishing History of Troy Town

CHAPTER III
1/9

CHAPTER III.
OF A BLUE-JERSEYED MAN THAT WOULD HOIST NO MORE BRICKS; AND A NIGHTCAP THAT HAD NO BUSINESS TO BE WHERE IT WAS.
No one acquainted with the character of that extraordinary town will be surprised when I say that, within an hour after the occurrences related in the last chapter, Troy had resumed its workday quiet.
By two o'clock nothing was to be heard but the tick-tack of mallets in the ship-building yards, the puffing of the steam-tug, the rattle of hawsers among the vessels out in the harbour, and the melodious "Woo-hoo!" of a crew at capstan or windlass.

Troy in carnival and Troy sober are as opposite, you must know, as the poles.

Fun is all very well, but business is business, and Troy is a trading port with a character to keep up: for who has not heard the bye-word-- "Working like a Trojan"?
At two o'clock on this same day a little schooner lay alongside the town quay, busily discharging bricks.

That is to say, a sunburnt man, blue-jerseyed and red with brick-dust, leisurely turned a windlass which let down an empty bucket and brought it up full.
Another blue-jerseyed man, also sunburnt and red with brick-dust, then pulled it on shore, emptied and returned it; and the operation was repeated.

A choleric little man, of about fifty, presumably the proprietor of the bricks, stood on the edge of the quay, and swore alternately at the man with the windlass and the man ashore.
"Look 'ere," said the man at the windlass, after a bit.
"Stop cussin'.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books